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Its not very often we see new names coming to market that appear to have such a strong presence about them. Typically it takes quite a period for a new name to be classed as on of the common brands, rather than being left on the sidelines, however there is a new name to the NAS scene that has only taken a couple of years to become more commonly known. Asustor, who have been around for only the last two years, are as some might guess a subsidiary of Asus, one of the leading brands in graphics cards and motherboards.
Taking the expertise in design, innovation and quality that Asus have, Asustor NAS systems are, in their desktop format, designed straight for the home user with clean and stylish looks, a user interface that makes the process of managing a NAS a lot simpler and more intuitive to work with and an app for iOS devices that allows the system to be remotely controlled when a HD TV is connected for its media centre functions.
Being a relatively new player in to the NAS market, Asustor are going to have their work cut out when it comes to taking on the big names such as QNAP and Thecus but with the backing of Asus, they do have a good change of being right up there with the big guns so to speak.
To give an overview of the Asustor range, there are currently eight systems in their product catalogue split into three groups. The first of these groups, aimed at home to power users comprises of a two and four bay system in the AS-3xx series, ideal for budget users who want a system to get them up and going. Next up from this is the power to business group, also known as the AS-6xx series (of which the system we’re looking at today is part of) and this comprises of four systems ranging from two to eight bays. The last group is for the SMB market and here lies two rack mount NAS, one four-bay 1U system and a nine-bay 2U system at the top end of the Asustor range.
Samsung’s Series 840 SSDs offer great value for your money, but they use the relatively new TLC type of memory chips. These have a shorter lifespan than the more commonly used MLC chips, but how much shorter exactly? Samsung of course has full confidence in the longevity of their Series 840 SSDs, but there really is only one way to find out just how long buyers can expect a TLC-equipped drive to function: by testing the hell out of it.
There is no doubt in anyones mind that 2014 will be the year of the M.2/NGFF SSD, however, Samsung is about to release an SSD that is guaranteed to rock the SSD community like few others have. This SSD is the Samsung 840 EVO 1TB mSATA SSD and it, not only is the one and only mSATA SSD capable of 1TB storage available in the world, but also, Samsung has priced this SSD at only $10 higher than it’s sister 1TB notebook form factor SSD. To say that there are more than a few mSATA SSD storage based notebook owners that have been waiting for some time for exactly this type of capacity is an understatement; Lenovo Thinkpad sales surpassed the 60 million mark some time ago.
Our SSD analysis today is perhaps the most detailed typical SSD report we have published to date, and so it should be. Actually, the word ‘typical’ doesn’t quite fit as the Samsung 840 EVO SSD, that I am now using as my mainstream system drive, is pushing over 1GB/s sequential speeds and an unbelievable 685MB/s low 4K random write performance. If you think this might be magic, you would be right and this magic is within the reach of every Samsung 840 EVO purchase, performance not even closely matched prior to this release.
Today I’ve gathered eight different NAS boxes for comparison. They range from four drive boxes down to single drive ones. The brands I’ve collected are a sampling from Seagate, Thecus, Synology and QNAP. These companies are the biggest and most popular NAS box providers out there, and the ones I have represent low end to high end versions for both home or personal use up to higher end feature packed boxes.
The mainstream SSD market is blowing up with products as low as 50 cents per GB. Transcend has the new SSD340 on store shelves, Chris walks us through it.
There once was a time, not so long ago, where an Intel SSD was the gold standard against which all other consumer SSDs were measured. That didn’t last long as other drive makers improved quickly and a handful of third party controllers emerged to level the playing field to anyone willing to put out a drive of their own. Since then, Intel has kept pace, mainly with third party controllers, but slowly invested more interest into the enterprise market. Now, Intel’s work in that area along with the hardware is being made available in a consumer drive with the 730 Series. Intel took has taken the DC S3500/S3700 drives from enterprise space and moved them down into the enthusiast market space and that is how the Intel 730 series was born...
The Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB SATA hard drive is an excellent choice for putting together a ‘green’ external storage solution. Putting this drive in an external enclosure, or better yet a NAS, will allow for some energy savings, especially if the drive is accessed frequently. I can definitely see myself putting a LP drive (or more) in a NAS to replace my expensive home server.
The Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo shows what's possible when you combine Thunderbolt with a traditional hard drive, you get an external hard drive with extremely high transfer rates. It's technically possible to daisychain several of them to increase the speed even more. So if you want external storage with a Thunderbolt connector, then the Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo is a great solution.
Over the past year, the SSD product landscape has changed drastically. Performance has gone up, prices have dropped, and new competitors have emerged in the market place. One company that has been around through this and more is Samsung. While it's not the biggest consumer brand for SSDs, Samsung has a big presence in the industry. As a long term supplier of SSDs to Apple, Dell, and HP; Samsung has had a lot of experience building and designing SSDs. Today we'll be looking at one of Samsung's consumer oriented SSDs, the 256GB 830 series, to see how it compares.
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